Populist Positions Research Articles

Civic Education and Democratic Identity in Contemporary Germany: Pedagogical Principles and Didactic Challenges in Times of Right-Wing Populism

ABSTRACT The article assesses the role of civic education in contexts of heightened political polarisation, especially with a focus on right-wing populism. By drawing on the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany, we argue that civic education is an indispensible building block in redeeming the famous Böckenförde dictum in modern pluralist democracies. We outline several key principles and challenges civic education has to address in order to foster a ‘thin’ notion of democratic identity – or ‘constitutional patriotism’ as outlined by Dolf Sternberger and Jürgen Habermas. Against this background, we discuss how neutral civic education can, may and should be. Finally, we conclude by formulating an appeal towards more attitude instead of restraint vis-à-vis right-wing populist positions.

Populist Backlash and Trade Agreements in North America: The Prospects for Progressive Trade

Populist rejection of the embedded liberal international order is evident in many Western democracies. This is partly attributable to the architects of this system, who over-promised widespread benefits while ignoring warnings from labour and fair-trade advocates about risks to economic security from transnational economic competition. This article contrasts Canadian and American conservative populist positions on free trade. Globalisation and free trade without consideration for fair trade weakened the embedded liberal compromise and undermined the Keynesian welfare state model which sustained it. While regional free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement have had marginal negative effects, they became convenient scapegoats in a strategy of “othering” adopted by Trump and other populists. Populism arose in part in response to middle- and working-class decline (alongside cultural changes and revitalised nativism), which eroded support for embedded liberalism. The heretofore pro-trade GOP followed Trump to a more protectionist and bilateral model to press for “America first,” tinged by nativist othering towards Mexico and China. This diverged from Canadian right-populist leaders, whose rhetoric generally supports freer trade despite scepticism among some supporters. Asymmetrical circumstances of the US as a global economic hegemon vs. Canada as trade-dependent middle power limits the feasibility of a protectionist, “Canada first” position while particularities of political and electoral systems create more room for nativism in the US. Polling results indicate support for free trade in both nations, with a priority for labour and social protections, which provides the potential for further engagement in progressive trade liberalisation. Hence a significant percentage of the population supports “fair-trade” approaches, not protectionism. However, many conservative politicians eschew fair-trade positions and endorse anti-labour policies. Despite gains such as the labour provisions in the Canada–US–Mexico Agreement, a right-populist alliance with fair-trade advocates and labour unions is unsustainable and would entail compromises like climate denial, anti-immigrant, and anti-equity approaches which hinder the pursuit of progressive multilateral trading regimes.

The wolf (canis lupus) as a symbol of an urban–rural divide? Results from a media discourse analysis on the human–wolf conflict in Germany

Given that wolves have been extinct in Germany for approximately 150 years, their return and growing population over the last decade has caused intense discussion and conflict. To develop a widely accepted and just coexistence between humans and wolves, a comprehensive understanding of the conflict is needed. There are indications that the conflict goes beyond dealing with the wolf population and marks a spatial–cultural divide between urban and rural areas. Nevertheless, the social dimensions of the human–wolf conflict in Germany have been little studied. The aim of this paper is to narrow this gap by means of a media discourse analysis including reader comments in order to provide insights into the constituent elements of this conflict. We conducted a qualitative content analysis. The sample comprises articles (n = 63) and reader comments (n = 515) over a period of one year (5/2018-5/2019) from six online periodicals in Germany. The results support the assumption of an urban–rural divide in terms of perspectives and values. The discourse indicates that rural actors who are most affected by the wolves’ vicinity have more negative attitudes towards them. At the same time, they feel abandoned and dominated by urban perspectives and politics. In addition, linkages to right-wing populist positions and conspiracy narratives that can be interpreted as a consequence of political alienation are found.

Heritage and the ‘Heartland’: Architectural and urban heritage in the discourse and practice of the populist far right

The role of architectural heritage in the discourse and practice of the populist far right is examined, referring to examples in Germany and focusing on the Alternative für Deutschland. The findings reveal that the Alternative für Deutschland appropriates historic buildings and sites in a number of ways, including visual and oral rhetoric and embodied performance, and instrumentalizes them to specific ends. Built heritage in particular serves to naturalize and therefore to legitimize and authorize populist positions by anchoring them not only in time but also at places, thus reinforcing populism’s exclusionary logic along territorial lines – including those describing the space of ‘European civilization’. This implies challenges for heritage professionals and institutions, as actors such as the Alternative für Deutschland attempt to map the notion of a national or a civilizational ‘Heartland’ onto existing heritage objects and sites or else engage in ‘making’ heritage in the urban environment.

Populist positions in party competition: Do parties strategically vary their degree of populism in reaction to vote and office loss?

This paper assesses how parties strategically vary their populist positions in party competition. The useful conceptualization of populism as a matter of degree has been established by previous studies. However, we know little about the conditions that drive parties to alter their degree of populism and, importantly, whether this varies between mainstream and populist parties. This paper analyzes the impact of vote and office loss on parties’ populist position-taking. It draws upon German and Austrian parliamentary debate speeches from the 1990s until 2018. Populism is measured using a dictionary method, an automated text analysis approach. The results show that parties react to contextual incentives by altering their degree of populism. Mainstream and populist parties are more populist when in opposition. Electoral losses affect mainstream and populist parties less clearly. The contribution of this paper is to integrate research on populism with a theoretical framework on party competition.

Interim results of US President Donald Trump's tenure from 2017 to 2020

The subject of the study is the analysis of the results of Donald Trump's tenure as president in the period from 2017 to 2020. The object of the study is the crisis of the political system and its impact on the domestic policy of President Donald Trump in the period from 2017 to 2020. The main purpose of the work is to study the activities of the non-systemic President of the United States of America Donald Trump in the period 2017-2020 to analyze the beginning of the deepening crisis of the American political system. In this work, the author used such methods as analysis, synthesis of information from documents, methods of generalization and construction of analogies to formulate conclusions, general scientific methods of induction and deduction, problem-chronological and comparative-historical methods. В The scientific novelty of this study is due to a new source base. Firstly, the research paper shows more fully than in other works of Russian authors the factors that led the United States of America to the beginning of a deep crisis of the American political system. Secondly, for the first time, a qualitative analysis of Donald Trump's populist views was carried out. Thirdly, on the basis of the studied material, an independent forecast of the prospects for the re-election of Donald Trump for a second presidential term has been compiled. The results of the conducted research prove that: to date, no alternative way out of the crisis state of the political system has been found. On the basis of an independent study, the factors that influenced the deepening of the crisis of the US political system have been identified. The deepening of the crisis of the American political system was caused by intraparty division based on the ideological polarity of the Democratic and Republican parties, the populist position of Donald Trump expressed in the growing authoritarianism of the presidential power, the free internal political will of the president-elect, the inability of the president-elect to find optimal political mechanisms for solving domestic and foreign policy issues.

Question design and the construction of populist stances in political news interviews

This paper focuses on the relationship between journalism and right wing populist discourses in the context of broadcast news interviews. We analyse a specific feature of question design in which the public is invoked as a source of opinionated positions in adversarial interviewing. Analysing data from a range of socio-political contexts, we identify a shift in adversarial questioning along a scale of ‘soft’ populism, that is the attribution of views and concerns to a generic public ‘in crisis’, to ‘hard’ populism, where interviewers construct hypothetical scenarios in which populist positions are attributed to ‘some people’. We argue that the democratic role of journalists as public watchdogs, holding politicians and public figures accountable on behalf of the public, is challenged by this normalisation of populist moral order discourses in a routine journalistic practice, both drawing on and contributing to the propagation of populist agendas and anti-democratic populist rhetoric.

Foundations of Regulatory Choice: Precaution, Innovation … and Nonviolence?

Two foundations of regulatory choice, precaution and innovation, co-exist in the political system of the European Union (EU). At the conceptual level the two foundations are complementary, and are both endorsed by the EU institutions, albeit in different ways and with different legal status. In the real-life of EU policymaking processes, however, precaution and innovation often become the terrain of polarised views anchored to technocratic or populist positions that erode trust in EU governance. We propose a way forward to this state of play. Instead of seeing the two foundations as opposite, we explore their dyadic relationship. We show that a conversation between the two is possible via an original reformulation of precaution and innovation. The reconciliation of precaution and innovation, we argue, is effective only in a context of social trust about the reconciled definitions. We propose the analytical and normative framework as seal of social trust. Nonviolence can assist the EU and its citizens in the path towards innovation that is socially responsible, future-proof and accountable, and enhance precaution as internalised commitment of decision-makers as well as scientific and social communities.

Why Are You Backing Such Positions? Types and Trajectories of Social Workers’ Right-Wing Populist Support

Abstract The rise of right-wing populism and its impact on inclusive welfare and fundamental principles of social work have been discussed mainly as an external challenge to the profession, assuming, implicitly, that social workers are immune to right-wing populist positions because of their professional values and identity. This article questions this assumption, presenting the findings of a qualitative study carried out in the Italian context. The interview study involved a sample of twenty-one social workers recruited to participate via Facebook, where they had published posts and comments supporting right-wing populist parties and positions. The findings indicate different attitudes, experiences and trajectories which are summarised in an interpretative model, reconstructing four ideal-typical profiles of social workers supporting right-wing populist positions. The article suggests abandoning the hypothesis of social workers being immune to populist influences and instead takes seriously the experiences and frustrations that make them turn towards the siren calls of right-wing populism. The article also makes a plea for qualitative in-depth analyses of processes of micro-mobilisation leading to right-wing populist support.

Cyberbullying and hate speech in the debate around the ratification of the Istanbul convention in Bulgaria: a semiotic analysis of the communication dynamics

ABSTRACTIn 2018 the Bulgarian Constitutional Court declared the Istanbul Convention (IC) unconstitutional. This decision was taken after several months of fierce public debate in Bulgaria over the implications of IC adoption. The debate was overwhelmed by the populist position rejecting this convention. From this debate the word “gender,” literally transcribed in Cyrillic letters (джендър) and having no direct translation in Bulgarian, not only became a neologism with strongly offensive connotations towards LGBT community, but also a general insult. The populist position in this debate, which won the majority population support, was supported by an impressive variety of rhetorical means, most of which were pure examples of cyberbullying. Then I propose a diachronic mirror model showing alphabet evolution to reach the domesticated mind phase, as well as the reverse process just after the Internet advent, with creative undomestication of mind from a simplified online writing through emoticons and emojis, to GIFs and Internet memes. I will demonstrate that although cyber offenders act alone before their computers, their behavior is determined by crowd psychology factors (e-crowd), making them less responsible for their behavior. Some characteristics of the so-called post-truth era are seen as a consequence of this mechanism..

Фельетоны Ф. В. Волховского (Ивана Брута) в «Сибирской газете»

F. V. Volkhovsky lived in Tomsk since 1881. Almost immediately he began to actively cooperate with the “Siberian newspaper” and eventually became its leading feuilletonist. During his work, Volkhovsky published 89 feuilletons on its pages, more than half of the edition’s feuilletons. A huge role in the formation of the poetics of feuilletons by F. V. Volkhovsky is played by “literary masks” with characteristic features of his biography and personal qualities. The work of F. V. Volkhovsky with the images of feuilletonists is best manifested in the image of Ivan Brut. It is in the feuilletons of Ivan Brut that the dialogicity is manifested, which was not previously characteristic of the author, and also the diversity of satire is revealed even deeper – in the materials there are many characters with whom the feuilletonist discusses the phenomena of social life. Ivan Brut is the most frequent image of the feuilletonist used by F. V. Volkhovsky – 22 feuilletons have been written under this pseudonym. The purpose of this study is to clarify the features and meaning of the feuilletonist’s image in the materials of F. V. Volkhovsky on the example of the narrator Ivan Brut (1883–1888). As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that Ivan Brut was perhaps the brightest character in the artistic and journalistic history of the first private newspaper in Western Siberia. This is the only full-fledged and thoughtful image of the feuilletonist – with his pedigree, biography and position, on many issues (in view of the democratization of the image) different from the author’s. Thus, Ivan Brut becomes not just a pseudonym, but a full- fledged co-author who constantly refers the reader to the same artistic images and thoughts. Despite a similar populist position with the author, Ivan Brut was able to “separate” from his personality and become a separate figure and a full-fledged member of the editorial board. The tradition of creating “literary masks” of feuilletonists was continued in the Tomsk newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn” (1894–1919), which to some extent was the “heir” of the “Sibirskaya Gazeta”. This technique expanded the satirical possibilities of feuilletonists, made it possible to involve readers in the literary game, and thereby increased interest in public problems that were discussed in the feuilletons. The image of Ivan Brut created by Volkhovsky in this respect turned out to be a kind of “reference point” for all subsequent generations of Tomsk feuilletonists of the 19 th – early 20 th centuries.

Speaking Up or Silencing Out in the Face of Rising Right-Wing Populism: A Dynamic Test of the Spiral of Silence across 15 European Countries

Abstract The spiral of silence theory posits that when a given political position comes to be seen as the majority opinion, perceivers holding alternative views will feel pressured to become silent, thereby contributing to the growing public decline of the minority camp. Testing the theory across 15 countries (N = 195,194) with data taken from the European Social Survey (2002–2016), we examined whether recently rising right-wing populist positions silenced supranational opinions or whether, on the contrary, they were silenced by established norms of democratic governance and social inclusiveness. The proposed modeling overcomes two limitations of prior research by using a macroscopic and dynamic approach that allows the detection of the “spiraling” normative conformity process in nationally representative samples.

Shooting the fox? UKIP’s populism in the post-Brexit era

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) has moved from being a single-issue party par excellence to a broader party of protest, taking advantage of wider feelings of discontent and disconnection. However, the 2016 referendum on UK membership of the EU fundamentally challenged its development and operation, by removing a core part of the party’s rationale and identity, and radically shifting the overall political landscape. This paper considers the re-positioning through the referendum period, both rhetorically and organisationally. Drawing on party press releases and media coverage, the paper argues that UKIP has become caught in a set of multiple transformations, pushing it in the longer term towards a more conventionally populist position in a way that carries important resonances for other Eurosceptic parties across the continent.

Parliamentary identity and the management of the far‐right: A discursive analysis of Dutch parliamentary debates

In many Western democratic societies, the far-right has considerable popular support and is often perceived as the winner of political debates. This raises the important question of how other politicians try to manage the far-right. We use parliamentary debates to examine how politicians define the identity of Member of Parliament (MP) in response to Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom in the Netherlands. The analysis shows that politicians made relevant the shared responsibility of MPs to solve societal problems, by using inclusive language, asking for concrete proposals, and emphasizing engagement in debate. These identity-related features question the parliamentary role performance of the far-right. In response, Wilders stressed the MP's responsibility of representing the ordinary people. The politicians used three strategies to challenge this defence: Questioning that the far-right actually fulfils their self-ascribed representative role; challenging the notion that only the far-right would represent the people; moving into a more populist position. Implications for social psychological research on marginal group members are discussed.

Be Empathic! The Influence of Empathy on Attitude Formation in the German Refugee Debate

The study was conducted to investigate the elaboration and memorisation of the emotionally charged refugee debate with reference to the possible influences of empathic feelings, political attitude and mood. It was hypothesised that empathy towards refugees correlates positively with advanced elaboration and memorisation of the refugee debate. Participants’ personal empathy was assessed through a self-report questionnaire which differentiates between four distinct dimensions of empathy. Afterwards, participants listened to an interview with a politician from a German populist party about refugee policies concluding with a test about the content. As expected, the results revealed a positive correlation between the empathy dimensions’ Fantasy and Personal Distress and the correct answers of the open-ended question test. The Fantasy dimension of empathy was significantly correlated with the elaboration and memorisation of the extreme and populist positions in the refugee debate. Important practical implications as well as limitations of the study were discussed.

Right-wing Populism Taking Hold in Germany. The Success of the Political Party “Alternative für Deutschland” in the Regional Elections of March 2016

In Germany, finally, a right-wing populist political party, the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) emerged and was rather successful in the elections of the European Parliament and in regional elections, especially in the elections of March 13, 2016, which were held in three states on subnational level, Baden- Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saxony-Anhalt. The paper analyzes these elections and the meaning which they have for the politics in these specific states and for Germany as a whole. This involves the analysis of the shift of votes in these elections. The study gives a brief history of the party AfD and examines the ideology of the party, which has economic-liberal, national-conservative, right-wing populist positions. The examination of the historical circumstances shows that the situation with the euro crisis and the European refugee crisis was favorable for the establishment of a right-wing populist party. It was found that recently there has been a shift in the ideology of the party with a strong turn to the right, involving anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic positions. The success of the party in the regional elections of March 2016 can partly be attributed to this ideological shift. The paper concludes with the prediction that this party will play a strong role in the future of German politics and that it will be represented in the next Bundestag after the federal elections in 2017.

A Christian democratization of politics? The new influence of Catholicism on Italian politics since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana

A paradox exists in relation to contemporary European Christian democracy. Its ideological influence has increased as Christian democratic parties have declined. This is particularly evident in Italy since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC). By investigating the ideological development of Italian parties and some key policy reforms that they introduced after the fall of the DC, this article explains this ‘Christian democratization of politics’, a process by which Catholic ideals and symbols acquire a decisive impact on the Italian party system. Three types of Christian democratization are individuated and analyzed: the gradual replacement of liberal values with Catholic political ideas in the positions taken by liberal-oriented parties; the novel synthesis between social Catholicism and social democracy by moderate left-wing coalitions; and the Lega Nord’s use of Catholic values to stress populist positions and identity issues.

Populism and Downing Street E-petitions: Connective Action, Hybridity, and the Changing Nature of Organizing

This article explores ongoing debates about whether new media empowers individuals at the expense of formal organizations, and how the nature of organizations/organizing is changing. Focusing on Downing Street E-petitions, it presents a content analysis of over 33,000 accepted petitions, analyzing who or what ‘sponsored’ each petition alongside interviews with petition creators. The analysis finds a wide range of ‘affiliations’, from formal groups to personal information, though many formal groups chose not to use the platform. In apparent support of the populist position, and contradicting resource mobilization theories, individuals created 19 of the 20 most signed petitions. Bennett and Segerberg’s (2013) theory of connective action, and Chadwick’s theories of organizational hybridity (2007) and the hybrid media system (2013) inform a detailed qualitative analysis of how petitions were promoted, and the nature of organization that underpinned this. The analysis finds that organizational structure(s) underpinning successful individual petitions were complex, with extensive organizational hybridity and petitioners exploiting hybrid media logics. Connective action was also apparent, though this did not fit as easily with practice on Downing Street E-petitions.

Literary Digital Humanities and the Politics of the Infinite

In the context of relationships between traditional and digital forms of memory and dissemination, this essay discusses two key positions in the digital humanities. The aestheticist position is broadly defined by the extension of literary values into the digital milieu, as it is articulated in the work of Johanna Drucker, N. Katherine Hayles, and Jerome McGann. The populist position rather emphasises engagement with contemporary social media, as it is represented by the work of Pierre Levy and Henry Jenkins. This comparison is designed to analyse a problematic parity between the two positions that is couched in their conception of archives and texts as being infinite; an infinitude that is political in the sense that engagement with it may facilitate or prohibit subjective agency and collective knowledge. Yet, through deconstruction, this analysis is designed to propose an alternate conception that negotiates the difficult relation between the finite and the infinite aspects of technological memory accumulation, and that poses the possibility of an alternate politics that problematically links the poles of engagement and disengagement with such accumulation.

Journalism, public imagination and cultural policy

Although the phrase ‘cultural policy’ would rarely form on journalists’ lips, the cultural results of journalism permeate national imaginations in the totality of their impressions, through processes of persuasion set‐up within an apparent framework of choice. Problematic cultural effects are produced through the mechanisms of gigantic markets whose very randomness seduces observers into believing that they are protected from conspiracy and manipulation. The paper explores certain mystifications within the ethos of mass market journalism, whose professional techniques beguile both producers and public in the way they suppress criticism or sympathy, and eradicate all but populist positions. The paper contends that many journalists are fuelled by an ethos of puritanical anti‐intellectualism. These themes are pursued by deconstructing some of the ‘professional’ codes in journalism and its didactic literature, in order to expose a mechanism for channelling public mentality that is condoned through the anti‐intellectualism of its techniques. The paper analyses media texts and processes of journalistic enculturation, engaging broadly with discourses inspired by the Frankfurt School and ideas of hegemony refined by Gramsci.